"People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? ... People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up ... and got all type of needles going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a ... thing about Africa."
"With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail."
"We as black folks have to do a better job.... Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard."
"These people are not parenting. They are buying things for their kids - $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'... They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is'... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
--from Bill Cosby's remarks at Howard University's Brown v Board of Education 50th Anniversary gala
Here's a
partial transcript. Here's some Washington Post
commentary, and some from
TownHall.com (that briefly addresses the complete-transcript problem), and some from
Working for Change and
Dissident Voice, and, on the other side, the
Washington Times and
Rush Limbaugh.